Discussions on Geography and geospatial technologies

Google Says They’re Not the Bad Guys

The Sydney Morning Herald has an interesting article heavily quoting Google Earth’s project head John Hanke, “We’re not the bad guys.” The article goes on to heavily quote Hanke concerning the issue, but the gist of it is that technology is morally neutral. You can use it for good and bad things and it’s up to the end user to dictate the use. We talked about that point quite a bit in this week’s podcast. However, it think it’s pretty clear that nearly any technology can be used for both good and bad purposes. If you deny the good based upon the bad, is the net benefit to the public better or worse? It’s a tricky situation and has to be largely decided on a case by case basis, I think. In the case of geospatial technology, sometimes even on a layer by layer basis. Certainly the debate is interesting and I believe that geospatial professionals should keep it in the forefront in our thinking.